


Comparative Biology

by coramatus



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Gen, Wirt and Greg are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 19:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17188595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coramatus/pseuds/coramatus
Summary: Beatrice did not miss being a bluebird. But there were parts of it that she did and parts that she definitely didn’t.





	Comparative Biology

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you care too much about ornithology. 8)

Beatrice did not miss being a bluebird.

The very indignity of being transformed from a human to a small bird was one thing. Having it thrust upon you and your unsuspecting family because of a cruel and pointless act on your part was only salt to an already open wound. She supposed she deserved it, but to drag the rest of her family into it too was just going overboard. 

But that was in the past. She'd found the scissors to break the curse, restored herself and her family back to their original forms, and that was all behind them and none of them were ever going to look at birds the same way ever again. 

(Fowl would be off this family's plates for a long time to come.) 

And yet despite all that, there were a few aspects of her bird life that she felt sorry to lose. 

She missed the colors, for one. 

At the time, she hadn't thought about it much, too consumed by guilt and shame over her new condition. But looking back, the world as seen through a bird’s eye was more... _vibrant_. 

Flowers practically lit up with color. What she would have brushed off as a simple white bloom now lit up with hidden patterns and markings, turning them into brilliant works of art. It was fascinating to see how differently pansies, asters, and chrysanthemums presented themselves in this sight. 

Even the sky blazed with myriad shades. Like light shimmering through crystal clear water, rays of brilliant purple, blue, and green swirled about in the bluest of blue days. Only clouds provided a brief respite from it all as they came to block the radiant, purple sun. 

When she asked the rest of her family about it, they eagerly shared their own experiences with their avian sight. They thought it was amazing, one of the few gifts their curse bestowed them. Her siblings even gave names to shades they wouldn't have known otherwise. As they listed them out, she found she knew exactly what they meant when they called something greeple or blorange or aquellow or pinkdigo. 

Perhaps if Beatrice had taken the time to explore her new form, she might have eventually discovered why birds saw this extra layer to the world in the way they did. But for now, it would have to remain a mystery she could teasingly flaunt at confounded naturalists. 

As for the rest, well… 

Losing the ability to fly was a loss that Beatrice felt profoundly. She would always remember the way her tiny body felt hurtling through the skies, thrilling her to no end as she watched her surroundings blur into themselves, feeling the invisible pockets of warm air under her wings that took her ever higher and farther. 

But by god, the constant maintenance it required was enough to drive her up a chimney! 

Feathers turned out to be something of a nightmare. Sure, they kept her warm and enabled those wonderful moments in the sky. But for every flight, for every major movement that ruffled her plumage, it required what felt like hours of preening. Constantly sticking feathers in her beak, realigning the edges of flight feathers, tugging out old loose ones, smoothing out the itchy new ones. Yet, even when she was convinced she was done, some bit of fluff would nag at her little bird instincts every few minutes and she would be forced to contort herself into strange positions to dive into her feathers to preen it out again, only for the whole process to repeat itself not minutes later. And if it wasn’t the feathers themselves, it was the pests that kept crawling into her plumage, eager to nibble on her and drive her mad with itching. 

Just that alone would have been punishment enough from the bluebird that cursed her. 

Though, thanks to Greg, she found out that neck rubs were the _best_ thing ever. 

However, perhaps the most enlightening fact about the life of a small bird that she would never miss was that it turned out that being one was utterly terrifying. 

Beatrice only needed one moment of carelessness to teach her the meaning of true terror. 

Early on, when she had still been trying to figure out the flying thing, she was practicing in an open field. The sudden swoop of a shadow sent her new instincts screaming and she barely managed to get out of the way before a _massive_ red-tailed hawk could land talon-first on her. 

She kept to the forest after that. And even then there were still dangers lurking about. Cats, snakes, and owls and other hungry opportunists skulked the underbrush, only needing a split-second’s worth of inattention before they struck. 

The only times she felt safe in the open was when she had the boys to perch on. Though small for humans, they were still much bigger than anything a hawk could manage. 

It made things that much more dangerous for her as she searched for Wirt and Greg after they had separated. Those were some of the most harrowing days of her life. Looking for any trace of the boys, scanning the forests from up above, left her out in the open. The skin on her tiny back crawling every time, she had to keep a careful eye out both above and below. She supposed the only thing that saved her some trouble was the snowstorm that no sane creature would dare be out in. Lucky for her, she was a human in a bird's body, so sanity was optional. 

Even when that chapter of their lives was over, the fear of being small and vulnerable had fun ways of sticking around despite everyone being back in their right shape and back on top of the food chain. For example, it was a bit harder to keep in mind her humanity and therefore imperviousness to hawks when her entire family was running away screaming because of the hawk phobia they had developed en masse when one flew overhead during an otherwise lovely family picnic. 

That had not been fun to explain to her cousins. 

So, while Beatrice was more than happy to be a human again; one with opposable thumbs, clothes with pockets, skin and hair that was easy to clean, and in a body not easily killed; she was hardly going to take it for granted again either. 

Beatrice did not miss being a bluebird. 

But she certainly was never going to forget it either. 


End file.
